​So this is what it has come to. A NASA spokesman officially denied this week that it is running a child slave colony on Mars after a guest on conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’s Info Wars program made the assertion. The denial made national headlines because Pres. Donald Trump is known to watch, and apparently trust, Jones’s program. On the broadcast, Robert David Steele made the accusation and alleged that global elites use pedophilia as a gateway toward what is essentially vampirism under a pseudoscientific gloss, with their fear hormones used to keep the wealthy forever young.

​“Pedophilia does not stop with sodomizing children,” Steele told Jones. “It goes straight into terrorizing them to adrenalize their blood and then murdering them. It also includes murdering them so that they can have their bone marrow harvested as well as body parts.”

There is no longer any difference between the news and the snake oil filling the fever swamps of the fringe. The only good news is that the mainstream news media and NASA are still treating these claims as stupid and contemptuous, but the fact that they are increasingly making headlines is disturbing.

Meanwhile, Ancient Originspublished an article by Lucy Wyatt in which the author alleged, without evidence, that the Knights Templar attempted to take control of the ancient city of Harran during the Crusades in order to gain access to the Hermetic wisdom of the Sabians who formerly inhabited it.

​It is important to reflect at this point on what might have been the genuine mission of the Knights Templar. There is no doubt that St Bernard played a key role in creating the cover story that this select group of religiously inspired crusaders existed to protect the routes to Jerusalem. But given the low numbers of Templars, at least to begin with, this explanation does not make sense. What is more plausible is that they had a presence in the Near East because, after the First Crusade in 1097, St Bernard and others from the Court of Burgundy became aware of occult knowledge contained in a body of writings known as the Corpus Hermeticum considered to be ‘older than Noah’ having been composed by Hermes Trismegistus and therefore of great interest. And one group of people who knew a lot about the Hermetica was the Sabians, who at the time of the Crusades lived in Harran.

​According to Wyatt, the effort to take Harran was strategically suspect because the city was on the “wrong side” of the Euphrates and offered no benefit in terms of controlling the Holy Land. In this, the writer claims to be following fringe historian Adrian Gilbert’s 1996 book Magi. However, this constellation of claims doesn’t quite hold up to scrutiny.

In 1096, the first Crusade commenced and a French noble named Baldwin became the first Count of Edessa, the county which included Harran. As the medieval writer al-Qadi reported, the Harran had long been the home of to a non-Islamic people who escaped conversion to Islam by identifying themselves with the Sabians, a “people of the book” from the Qur’an specifically exempted by Islamic law from conversion. They also identified their god-hero, Hermes Trismegistus, with the Islamic prophet Idris. However, the date when this took place is disputed, with al-Qadi favoring a date of 830 CE, but references to the Sabians of Harran occurring back before 770 CE. In 990, the Numayrids, a Shia Arab tribe, took control of the city, and in 1032, Shiites destroyed the Hermetic temple of Harran and suppressed the Sabian community. While the Byzantine Empire had retaken most of Edessa in the 1030s, Harran remained under Shia control.

Anyway, the first Baldwin had become the Count of Edessa and naturally wanted control over the territory he had been assigned, but this lasted only until 1100, when Baldwin was elected King of Jerusalem. He was succeeded by another count named Baldwin, who reigned until 1118. During this period, the county of Edessa was not the backwater that Ancient Origins suggests, but it was in decline relative to its former importance in centuries past. Baldwin II of Edessa wanted to reattached Harran to his crusader state, and he put together a coalition of princelings from surrounding crusader states to accomplish this goal. In 1104, the coalition besieged Harran, which attracted the attention of the Seljuk Turks, who countered the effort and eventually won the Battle of Harran, breaking the power of Edessa.

You might notice that cover stories and Knights Templar do not play much of a role in what was a complex effort among many groups to navigate the fault line between Muslim and Christian control in a volatile region. Harran is only on the “wrong” side of the Euphrates if you assume that the only goal of the Crusaders was to control the Holy Land. If you view the strategic map in terms of petty rulers trying to maximize their own territories, it makes perfect sense why a ruler of Edessa would want to annex the next major town over from his border, essentially adding to his territory the province east of the Euphrates.

The problem with assuming that the Knights Templar joined the fight because Bernard of Clairvaux wanted to get his hands on the Hermetica is that the Europeans didn’t know anything about the Hermetica at the time. The ancient texts had been lost to the West at the end of Antiquity and were only rediscovered after Byzantine copies were translated in Italy in the Renaissance. Hermes Trismegistus was considered a bit of an unsavory character on account of the fact that he was a pagan and possibly possessed of the evil wisdom of the Fallen Angels, according to European texts. In order for the claim to make any sense, the Templars needed to know about Hermeticism before they went in search of the very Hermetic documents they would need to possess to know about Hermeticism! [Update: As the comments below note, I misread the dates given in the article, and it appears that the author claimed that the Templars learned of the Corpus Hermeticum during the First Crusade, not before, though this still creates the problem that if they had the Corpus from Eastern sources, there is no reason to go invading Harran to look for more since the whole Middle East was lousy with Hermetic literature.] It’s probably also worth noting that the Corpus Hermeticum is the name given to the collection of Greek material as edited and published in the Renaissance. It is not the same as the literature the Sabians would have had access to, since the extant Corpus is only a selection of the much vaster Hermetic literature of Antiquity, and it omits (with the exception of the Emerald Tablet) all of the Arabic Hermetic literature of the Middle Ages.

Wyatt writer offers another whopper—that the Sabians were not simply Hermetic Middle Easterners but were instead Egyptians!

Indeed, it is possible that the name ‘Sabian’ derives from the ancient Egyptian word for star, sba, and they may have been ancient refugees from Egypt. The Sabians could have been the last remnants of Egyptian priesthood which mostly disappeared from Egypt in the 4th century when Romano-Christians destroyed what was left of Egyptian temples.

​While it is true that the Arabs said that the Sabians made pilgrimages to Giza to make sacrifices at the alleged tomb of Hermes Trismegistus, there is no evidence whatsoever of an Egyptian priesthood in Harran, a city that had its own religious traditions for thousands of years.

Wyatt never did return to the idea of the Knights Templar in Harran, and she did not bother to try to make an actual argument for why we should assume that they participated in to find esoteric wisdom in Harran. The actual warrant for the claim appears to be Masonic lore, where the allegation that the Templars learned of Masonry from “Syrian Christians,” allegedly descendants of the Essenes, has led many fringe writers to swap in Sabians for Syrian Christians. One old version of the story came from the Archdeacon Walter B. Mant back in 1830:

These knights were all Freemasons; from some of the Syrian Christians, who had yet retained the mysteries of the Craft, they received their initiation, and no one was admitted into the Templar’s society before he had been prepared by reception into the three degrees of Masonry. […] These were the men who, returning from the Holy Land, brought with them the true principles of Freemasonry, and patronising the operative branch also, re-established the Order on its true basis.

Modern writers are merely attempting to make old stories seem more scientific by layering historical facts atop stories developed as legends and myths.

Only a mental degenerate would be so obsessed with pedophilia that increasingly stupid and vulgar claims, like Steele's, would receive such attention. I'm forced to conclude Steele and his ilk are seriously fucked up.

As to Wyatt's article, I'm certain Scott Wolter's ears perked up. I wonder how long it will take for this latest nonsense to be accepted.

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TONY S.

7/1/2017 01:58:51 pm

Lord save us from Scott Wolter being given any new material for his Templar delusions!

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BigNick

7/1/2017 11:12:12 pm

Scott Wolter should be given as much material as possible. The man is a comic genius. He's like Indiana Jones meets Don Quixote meets the Coen brothers.

Jim

7/2/2017 03:26:28 pm

Well at least we now know why Wolter doesn't like peer review. It would appear that "peer review" is just people purposely demonstrating his errors and playing "gotcha" !!

From his Blog site today:,,,,"I will not allow my blog site to become a playground for trolls or those who want to try and play "gotcha."

"NOW" we know??? That said, it's a point that bears making over and over. Never forget. That giving Minnesotans, football players, gin drinkers, dive buddies, closeted homosexuals, geologists, and fringe theorists a bad name em-effer!!!

"In fact, the top runic scholar in the world recently said the KRS is 70/30 of it probably being a hoax. This still gives those who believe it's a hoax hope, but what it really means is that scholar knows the inscription is probably medieval and is hedging his bet for when it's finally accepted as authentic. That's a scholar who's finally getting smart likely sensing something big is about to come.

He's right on the money."

So the guy saying it's a hoax means the guy thinks it's NOT a hoax. W T F ? "What someone means is really the opposite of what they say."

With that in mind, Scott Wolter is not insane, should not be imprisoned, and should not be put to death. He is not so defective that deactivating and discarding him is the only rational approach.

An Over-Educated Grunt

7/1/2017 01:11:24 pm

The number of knights in the order was fairly small, but assuming a fairly normal mesny of ten men at arms or archers per knight, even the half-dozen founding Templars would have had fifty-plus men at hand; the order's first statutes clearly address this, specifying equipment and horses for sergeants as well as knights. That's a much more reasonable size for a constabulary, and it grew from there. This idea that there were too few knights relies on the knights being the only ones under arms.

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TONY S.

7/1/2017 01:57:47 pm

One of the things that surprised me when first reading about the Knights Templar, or knights in general during this period, was how large the retinue of each individual knight was.

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Steve StC

7/1/2017 11:32:55 pm

Gosh! You guys seem like you're reading something other than the crumbs from...well, you know the rest.

Yes, the numbers were much higher than the supposed 9 who "guarded the way to the Holy Land." This is clearly an understatement of the actual number present. However, it's still too low a number.

Steve StC

7/1/2017 11:43:59 pm

2780 miles. from Reimes, France to Jerusalem. 20 men per knight. 1 mile between them. It simply doesn’t add up. And this is why so many people don't buy the BS that they were there to protect the way to the Holy Land, but rather something larger.

BigNick

7/2/2017 12:01:45 am

Having a stated goal and having the resources to do it are two different things.
If you were to have a community meeting to discuss cleaning up your neighborhood, and only 3 people show up, does that mean those three people weren't really there for the stated purpose?

Americanegro

7/2/2017 02:06:50 pm

They weren't guarding the roads in Europe and that was never the purpose you enormous dummy. They were establishing a military presence in Boogaboogaland.

An Over-Educated Grunt

7/3/2017 12:41:46 am

I'm sorry, Steve, I know you said you were leaving, so I'm forced to assume that all your posts since are an illusion. I refuse to interact with figments.

Americanegro

7/1/2017 01:23:35 pm

Of course Jason's alter ego Only Me is first!

If you were running a child slave camp would you admit it?
https://masscommons.wordpress.com/2012/03/15/fear-loathing-on-the-campaign-trail-make-them-deny-it/

Jason, I fear you've misframed the argument.

"The problem with assuming that the Knights Templar joined the fight because Bernard of Clairvaux wanted to get his hands on the Hermetica is that the Europeans didn’t know anything about the Hermetica at the time."

True according to the only sources currently available to us. But only according to those sources.

The story actually is "after the First Crusade in 1097, St Bernard and others from the Court of Burgundy became aware of occult knowledge contained in a body of writings known as the Corpus Hermeticum".

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Americanegro

7/1/2017 01:36:24 pm

Sorry for the premature submission.

"The ancient texts had been lost to the West at the end of Antiquity and were only rediscovered after Byzantine copies were translated in Italy in the Renaissance."

Again, you're not addressing the story. The story is that the knowledge of the texts was in the East and was found in the East.

The story: "[A]fter the First Crusade in 1097, St Bernard and others from the Court of Burgundy became aware of occult knowledge contained in a body of writings known as the Corpus Hermeticum".

"In order for the claim to make any sense, the Templars needed to know about Hermeticism before they went in search of the very Hermetic documents they would need to possess to know about Hermeticism!"

No. Again, you're not following the story being told. The Templars were founded in 1119. That's 22 years after 1097, when the story says the knowledge of the texts was found in the East, not in the West. One year for every letter of the Hebrew alphabet, but who's counting?

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TONY S.

7/1/2017 01:55:57 pm

Excellent points. One of the things that has always fascinated me about the East during that time period is its preservation of ancient knowledge while the Dark Age was engulfing Europe.

The problem, of course, is that if they encountered the Corpus Hermeticum among the Byzantines, what exactly did they need Harran for? The Harranian Sabians had been suppressed, their wisdom scattered, and the Hermetic texts spread among the enemy Muslims. No matter how you slice it, it doesn't make sense.

Americanegro

7/1/2017 02:45:17 pm

Again, you're not following, and therefore not refuting, the story as presented. No one said "among the Byzantines". You're putting words in someone else's mouth then arguing against those words.

The Sabians were suppressed in 1032, long after both Baldwin I and Baldwin II. Again you're playing fast and loose with the chronology.

TONY S.

7/1/2017 02:52:19 pm

I think you mean long before Baldwin I and Baldwin II

TONY S.

7/1/2017 02:57:45 pm

Leave it to an Ancient Origins author to get critical dates wrong. "After the First Crusade" would have been late 1099 early 1100, not 1097.

Americanegro

7/1/2017 04:05:17 pm

Dammit! Tony S. is right. Apologies for the last post Jason, but not for the rest. The idea that a suppressed culture simply disappears is overly something -istic.

Mr. Pyramid

7/1/2017 05:39:40 pm

True, but the suppression of the Sabians was merely a byproduct of political turmoil in the region around Harran in the 11th century, and that turmoil probably eliminated them as a religious community by the time of the First Crusade. One account says that the Sabians' last temple was turned into a fortress in the events of 1031, while another implies that the Sabians had a holy site that was destroyed in the early 1080s. There is no sign that the Sabians existed later than that. Whether one tries to reconcile these accounts or disbelieve one of them, the general impression they leave is of a dying community. According to Kevin Van Bladel in The Arabic Hermes:

"What is clear is that the Sabians of Harran were a vulnerable group in this century of frequent conflict in Syria, and their vulnerability became critical at times of political upheaval. It was not a strictly intellectual, doctrinal persecution induced by a supposed general 'Muslim hostility to freedom of thought' that ended the Sabian community, as some have imagined. It can be inferred rather that the Sabian leaders in Harran supported the Numayrids, who protected them in turn, because, as far as these few reports indicate, they were put at risk only when the Numayrids lost control of the town. The events of 1031 appear to have been a turning point; Sabians converted in large numbers out of fear to help safeguard their lives and property in the midst of a violent political crisis. It is a matter of speculation how long the Sabians of Harran survived as a sect without any place of worship after the 1080s, but because they are never mentioned again as a living group at a later time, it seems safe to say that ultimately the wars ending in the arrival of the Saljuqs in Syria were instrumental in the definitive end of the Sabian community at Harran. The survival or demise of the Sabians was simply not important enough to attract more historical notice. By the 1080s their community was probably vanishingly small."

Americanegro

7/2/2017 12:34:21 pm

Much like the situation with the Confederacy in the U.S. That culture was completely lost after being suppressed, right?

Mr. Pyramid

7/2/2017 03:28:53 pm

If the Confederacy were a minority group in a midsized town the two might be comparable. You are simply being snide for the sake of being snide, not considering the absurdity of your own analogy.

Americanegro

7/2/2017 04:04:49 pm

The water on your brain must be keeping you mighty cool today.

You think the Sabians were only in Harran? SMFH. They were numerous enough and widespread enough to be mentioned in the Q-Ran as a People of the Book. Think of Harran as Richmond or Vicksburg. Read a book before it's too late. Well, read one anyway.

Jeeze Louise, stupid stupid stupid.

Mr. Pyramid

7/2/2017 06:59:49 pm

The fundamental book on this subject is The Arabic Hermes by Kevin Van Bladel, which I just cited above. Read it before you open your mouth again.

The Quran refers to Sabians as People of the Book, but no one knows who Muhammad was actually referring to when he mentioned them. Many candidates have been proposed, but none have gained general acceptance. As Van Bladel says: "Sabian was a designation given in the Quran (with the form as-̣Ṣabi'un) for one of the religious groups considered licit in the community of Muḥammad, but the original, intended meaning of the Quranic term Sabian seems to have been lost fairly early… [T]he question has never been answered to everyone’s satisfaction." The Harranian community of pagans claimed to be Sabians during the caliphate of Mamun so as to avoid persecution for their paganism, and to support that claim they declared their Hermetic texts as their sacred book and Hermes Trismegistus as their prophet.

It is true that there were two actual communities of Harranian-descended Sabians during the Islamic Golden Age. One was in Harran and the other was several families of Harranians who settled in Baghdad, but the last signs of the Baghdad community were in the early 11th century. The last Baghdad Sabian known by name converted to Islam in 1012, and a jurist issued a fatwa against Sabians sometime before 1024. Individual Sabians may well have retained their religious traditions past the end of the 11th century, but there is no sign of cohesive communities of Sabians after the events in Harran in the early 1080s.

Americanegro

7/2/2017 11:14:26 pm

"he Harranian community of pagans claimed to be Sabians during the caliphate of Mamun so as to avoid persecution for their paganism, and to support that claim they declared their Hermetic texts as their sacred book and Hermes Trismegistus as their prophet."

Now you're just putting your own stuff right after a quote from a book as if you hope the reader will take it as being from the book, but it's really just your own assertion and you're just making shit up, as you are with the numbers and geographical distribution of Sabians.

Be
gone
.

Mr. Pyramid

7/2/2017 11:48:57 pm

I will give you the full quotation, then.

"According to a well-known account, in the reign of the caliph al-Mamun (813–833), the pagan Harranians are said to have adopted the name Sabians (Arabic Ṣābi'a) in order to acquire a protected status for their religion. Sabian was a designation given in the Quran (with the form as-̣Ṣabi'un) for one of the religious groups considered licit in the community of Muhammad, but the original, intended meaning of the Quranic term Sabian seems to have been lost fairly early. The Harranians succeeded in adopting the name, thereby preserving their religious practice from possible persecution, and Arabic sources from about the time of al-Ma'mun generally do call the Harranian pagans Sabians. They were not, however, the only group that came to be identified as Sabian; the Mandaeans of southern Iraq adopted the name, leading to an ongoing scholarly debate over whether the Mandaeans or the Harranians were the 'real' Sabians. By the early tenth century, any supposed 'pagans' or idolaters of any period, such as the ancient Greeks, pre-Christian Romans and Egyptians, and the Buddhists, were also called Sabian. The precise identity of the Sabians whom God sanctioned in the Quran was and is a matter of persistent controversy for Muslim exegetes and heresiographers.

"Daniel Chwolsohn laid the foundation for modern research on the Sabians with his great two-volume study published in 1856. Despite the problematic character of some of its conclusions, it still remains one of the best resources on the subject, particularly because it collects most of the testimonia about the Sabians available in Arabic. Chwolsohn’s achievement is especially remarkable because, working before most of these texts were printed, he had to read his sources in manuscripts without indices or other modern textual apparatus. His work has to a great extent determined the two main issues under debate regarding the Sabians: who were the Sabians referred to in the Quran, and what were the beliefs and practices of the Sabians of Harran?

"There have been many attempts to answer the first question by a wide variety of approaches to numerous different sources, with equally varied answers. Modern scholars have identified the Quranic Sabians as the Mandaeans, the hunafa understood as Gnostics, Christian Sabaeans (Saba', the people of Sheba) of South Arabia, the Manichaeans, Elchasaites, the Gnostics understood as the Archontics or Stratiotics (a Judeo-Christian sect mentioned by Epiphanius in the fourth century), the hunafa understood as 'sectarians,' and even just as the Harranian pagans. I tend to believe that the real identity of the group intended in the Quran cannot be known for certain given the present evidence. Gündüz made a chronological survey of the Arabic sources on the Sabians, showing that the Mandaeans were indeed considered to be Sabians from at least the middle of the eighth century, but this does not prove that they were intended as the Quranic Sabians a century earlier. Thus the question has never been answered to everyone’s satisfaction."

Americanegro

7/3/2017 12:25:50 am

So in short you know nothing and the author of the book knows nothing.

I already knew that.

Brain beats quote every trip of the train.

Mr. Pyramid

7/8/2017 03:28:24 am

Wrong. There is no direct evidence about what the term "Sabian" meant to Muhammad, but we do have evidence about the last years of the two Sabian communities, although not as much as one would like.

Van Bladel's information about the dwindling of the Sabian community in Harran is based on two primary sources: a contemporary account by Yahya ibn Sa'id of Antioch, and a description of buildings in Harran by Ibn Šaddad two hundred years later. These sources strongly imply that the Sabian community in Harran was dying in the eleventh century.

The sources for the conversion of the last known Baghdad Sabian include Ibn al-Jawzi's History of the Nations and Yaqut al-Hamawi's Dictionary of Learned Men. Van Bladel also cites François de Blois' article "Ṣābiʾ" in the Brill Encyclopedia of Islam, which apparently provides a list and genealogy of known Sabians in Baghdad. Individual Sabian scholars in Baghdad, at least, seem to be fairly well recorded. If the last one known by name converted to Islam in 1012, and a fatwa against Sabians was issued sometime in the next decade or so, it seems unlikely that the Baghdad Sabians would have lasted any longer than those in Harran.

Van Bladel says nothing about Hermes-worshiping Sabians anywhere but Harran and Baghdad, so it would seem no primary source mentions them as existing outside those two communities.

TONY S.

7/1/2017 01:51:52 pm

Baldwin II was the first cousin of Godfroi de Boullion and his brother Baldwin I, who relinquished his position as Prince of Edessa to become the first king of Jerusalem.

As one of the crusader states, the County of Edessa was nearly as important as the Principality of Antioch, the County of Tripoli, and the Kingdom of Jerusalem.
The failure of the Second Crusade to recapture it after its fall began the slow, inexorable dismemberment of the Frankish powers in the Holy Land.

Though initially interested in conquering the entirety of the Holy Land, the nobles and the military commanders came to realize that was a realistic impossibility. By the time Baldwin II became king, the crusaders understood that they would be relegated to the territories already under their control, unless they received massive reinforcements from Europe, something they consistently asked for but never received. (Although they did miss opportunities at different times to take control of Aleppo and Damascus which may have ultimately strengthened their positions in the Holy Land). The rulers took any chance that came their way to increase their territories, whether through annexation or limited military action, often losing it again not long afterwards.

As more time passed the Templars became more interested in simply maintaing their own power and prestige; their jealousy and mistrust of other military orders like the Hospitallers broke out into open hostility and rivalry, often causing unnecessary political and military problems. The infighting was often detrimental to the crusading cause as a whole and more than once put the entire European community in Palestine in danger.

The rulers of the crusader states were interested in their own individual fiefdoms above all else. They acted no differently than as if they had never left Europe in that sense. They allowed themselves to become involved in petty squabbles and remained divided, seriously undermining their strategic positions; what they should have been doing was present a united front to the threats that loomed all around them.
The biggest motivation for the nobles who went on the First Crusade to do so was to participate in a land grab. Their desire to flee the endless wars and infighting in Europe and seek out their own properties was their driving force.

This silly notion that the Templars were seekers of secret wisdom in the East before they left Europe goes against everything currently known about them. It wasn't until they had already spent time in the East for a significant amount of time, being exposed to Eastern teachings through their intimate contacts with members of the Muslim world that they started to absorb some of it. Their belief system ended up being a mixture of Western and Eastern ideas, but that's as far as it went according to the evidence of scholars and historians.
There isn't anything inherently unusual about it either; beginning with the second generation of crusaders, the Franks as a people became a blend of East and West. They became tolerant of, respected, and even adopted Eastern traditions. One of the things that stands out the most for me personally when reading about the Crusader states is how different the "native" Franks were from the ones who arrived fresh from Europe. The recent arrivals were intolerant, ignorant and bigoted, and often expressed surprise at the tolerance displayed by their compatriots towards the Muslims and Jews, and their peaceful, mutually beneficial interactions.

I suppose as long as the fringe will be around, the Templars will always be one of the pillars that they weave their fantasies around. What I find most tragic and frustrating about it as a history buff is that they are an interesting historical subject in and of themselves without all of this nonsense attached to them, with a rich history full of interesting personalities and more than enough drama to satisfy the enthusiast. But people who are drawn in by the fringe will never experience that for themselves and instead will get their heads filled up with fairy tales masquerading as history instead. Well, they get what they deserve.

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Klaus

7/2/2017 04:13:22 am

Chapeau @ Tony

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bear47

7/4/2017 11:52:02 am

Tony S.,
As an old guy who has been interested in actual history for over 60 years, I'm with you on this. Those who buy into the fringe crapola have no idea what they are missing and deserve the crap they buy into.
The actual history is much more interesting than the garbage pushed by the various fringe clowns. Just my own opinion and I don't care at all who disagrees with me. Trying to engage with the fringe crowd is as bad as trying to have an open discussion with any brand of religious believer, it isn't worth the time and only leaves you frustrated by their ignorance in most cases and absolute stupidity in the others.

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TONY S.

7/4/2017 03:05:01 pm

Thanks Bear47, always a pleasure to meet a kindred spirit who holds history in the same regard as I do. We have a good group of regulars here who share our view, I'm glad to say.

I have removed posts in this thread from "Steve StC" at the request of the actual Steve St Clair, who said that the posts were not by him.

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TONY S.

7/4/2017 03:50:41 pm

Oh I'm sure they weren't. ;)

Apologies if I created any problems, Jason.

Americanegro

7/5/2017 12:34:36 am

Not up to his usual standard of batshit crazy?

Americanegro

7/6/2017 04:54:46 pm

Funny that he would check in the day or the day after the day someone impersonates him. Occam's Razor suggests he was drunkposting.

An Over-Educated Grunt

7/6/2017 10:29:12 pm

Feels like now is the time to start listing things Steve St. Clair hasn't posted.

Steve St. Clair has never posted about how the crumbs in your keyboard are a result of a Templar-Bloodline conspiracy to spread the bread of the Last Supper, traditionally the literal flesh and blood of Christ, worldwide in the information age.

David Bradbury

7/2/2017 05:52:49 am

I'm puzzled by the alleged involvement of Bernard of Clairvaux. At the time of the foundation of the Templars, he was establishing daughter houses and formally creating a new monastic order by gaining Papal approval for the "Charter of Charity" (23 Dec 1119). This provoked enmity from the Benedictine order, and if it had become known that Bernard was simultaneously investigating pagan mystical literature, they would have used it against him.

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Americanegro

7/2/2017 12:47:31 pm

Perhaps that explains why he didn't tell them.

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David Bradbury

7/2/2017 01:30:14 pm

Perhaps. With hindsight, is there significant evidence of a growth of subtle Hermetic influence in Bernard's later writings, or in the writings of others within the Cistercian order over the next century or so?

Americanegro

7/2/2017 02:10:53 pm

Sounds like a nice research project. Why don't you get right on it because I don't care at all.

Assuming of course that your massive brain is qualified to find "significant evidence of a growth of subtle Hermetic influence".

David Bradbury

7/2/2017 02:49:56 pm

I'm much more of a "real history" person myself, but if I were trying to connect the early Templars and St. Bernard with the supposed heart of Middle Eastern Hermetic culture, I'd turn the suppositions completely on their head:
In the aftermath of the first Crusade, the Catholic Church wanted to obtain the best information it could get on Hermetic culture in the Levant, without being seen to be particularly interested, and Bernard, in his dealings with the Pope around 1119, mentioned that he knew a few knights who might be interested in helping out. Then, with discreet Papal blessing, he encouraged the formation of the Templars to carry out the task and get whatever other reward they could from the publicly-declared purpose of their mission.

Americanegro

7/2/2017 03:01:54 pm

Sounds like a nice research project. Why don't you get right on it because I don't care at all.

David Bradbury

7/2/2017 04:48:09 pm

There is of course a catch to my above theory. If there had been relevant Vatican documents from the 12th century, including translated results of the supposed Harran fishing trip, they would probably be available to scholars by now. The lack of such documents suggests that, if the Templars did try to get such information from Harran, they found nothing of value there, because adherents of the cult had long ago left for steady employment in places like Baghdad.

Americanegro

7/3/2017 12:30:19 am

I'm picturing you in a smoking jacket and perhaps a pipe, devoting your life to two pursuits, wowing the boozy dowagers with your pseudo-erudition at cocktail parties, and fleeing at the first hint of messy lab or research work.

"Cooper, you remind me today of a small, Mexican Chihuahua."

Jane Smith

7/3/2017 12:42:04 pm

Bernard was born in 1090. The Cistercians were founded in 1098 by Robert of Molemse. Stephen Harding wrote the Charter of Charity which was completed probably by 1112. Bernard joined the order in 1113 and built the daughter house in Citeaux. The Templars were formed about 1118-1119 at the request of King Baldwin II. They had already taken Augustinian vows from the Patriarch of Jerusalem at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, thus they became the first warrior/monks. Bernard wrote the first Latin Rule for the Templars at the Council of Troyes in 1128, at the request of King Baldwin. Bernard was relunctant to go, as he was ill at the time. I would like to add to the growing bibliography (most of which I've read) books by the French medievalist, Regine Pernoud.

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David Bradbury

7/3/2017 04:34:45 pm

"The Templars were formed about 1118-1119 at the request of King Baldwin II. They had already taken Augustinian vows from the Patriarch of Jerusalem"
What did you mean there by "already"?

Americanegro

7/3/2017 06:00:01 pm

Another case of your laziness. Simply can't wait to slither into the smoking jacket. There are boozy dowagers to dazzle with your erudition (and distaste for actual research).

"In 1118, during the reign of Baldwin II, Hugues de Payens, a knight of Champagne, and eight companions bound themselves by a perpetual vow, taken in the presence of the Patriarch of Jerusalem, to defend the Christian kingdom. Baldwin accepted their services and assigned them a portion of his palace, adjoining the temple of the city; hence their title "pauvres chevaliers du temple" (Poor Knights of the Temple)."

You can run down the source yourself, if they have the internet where you live.

David Bradbury

7/4/2017 03:14:07 am

The source is (for practical purposes) the first edition of the Catholic Encyclopedia, now over a century old. Its narrative is not in line with modern scholarship.

Jane Smith

7/3/2017 06:28:04 pm

Hugh de Payen and his companions made a bee-line for the Church of the Holy Sepulcher when they arrived in Jerusalem, as did most pilgrims and crusaders. They took Augustinian vows and planned on staying at the Church. However, Baldwin, recognising their bravery, told them he need policemen, not more monks, and talked them into becoming what was essentially a police force. He gave them the Al Aqsa mosque for their home and headquarters, on the Temple Mount. Baldwin himself lived in the Tower of David, also on the mount. So, you see, they were already Augustinians before they became Templars. This was very unusual, as normally belonging to more than one Order is not allowed, but these were unusual times.

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TONY S.

7/3/2017 06:51:21 pm

Baldwin II did not ask them to do anything. By every account, including that of William of Tyre, it was the exact reverse. The nine founding members of the order presented themselves to the king.

What is your source for them having taken Augustinian vows? Several of them had previous connections to the Cistercians.

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Americanegro

7/3/2017 07:53:57 pm

In the sense that Scott Wolter has connections to the Cistercians? Meeting and taking vows are two different things. I served Sissy Spacek a ham salad once but I wasn't in Carrie.

Jane Smith

7/3/2017 09:22:50 pm

Try Barber's THE NEW KNIGHTHOOD page 7. I won't quote it in its entirety, but here goes, "...though the implication is that at first they intended simply to adopt a penitential way of life ..later a more active role was suggested to them. Michael the Syrian says that it was the king...who persuaded Hugh of Payens and thirty companions 'to serve in the knighthood...rather than becoming a monk...' ". I admit I'm not an historian. I just love medieval history and alway have my nose in a book.

David Bradbury

7/4/2017 03:39:20 am

The English translation of the Chronicle of Michael the Syrian merely places the foundation "in that period, when Baldwin was the second king of Jerusalem" (which itself is, I think, a slight mistranslation, but the point is that it refers merely to a period which began in 1118, not specifically to the year 1118). Also, its narrative is imperfect, so we'll need Americanegro to do some research on other versions of Michael's text.

Also, from THE RULE OF THE TEMPLARS by Upton-Ward, p. 1, "They took vows of poverty, chastity and obedience before the Patriarch of Jerusalem and were attached to the regular canons of the Holy Sepulchre who lived by the rule of St. Augustine."

David Bradbury

7/4/2017 12:20:09 pm

The English translation of Michael is from an Armenian version, and the French translation of the original Syriac text, under the title of "Chronique de Michel le Syrien" (Book 15, chapter 11, in vol. 3, page 201) has a significantly different account of the founding of the "Frankish brothers" (my translation from the French):
"At the start of the reign of Baldwin II, a Frankish man came from Rome to pray in Jerusalem. He had made a vow not to return to his own country, but to become a monk, after spending three years helping the king in war, with the 30 horsemen who accompanied him, and they would end their lives in Jerusalem. When the king and his nobles saw that they were illustrious in war, and had used them in the city for their three years' service, they advised this man to serve in the militia, with those who followed him, rather than become a monk to work merely at the salvation of his own soul, and to protect the area from bandits.
The man, whose name was Hugues of Payens, then accepted that advice, and the thirty horsemen who had accompanied him joined and united themselves with him. The king gave them the House of Solomon for their residence, and villages for their subsistence. The patriarch likewise gave them some of the church's villages.
They imposed on themselves the rules of monastic life" [etc. ...]

That "illustrious in war" bit suggests the initial three years had not started by the first half of 1119, when the Crusaders and Jerusalem's Christians suffered badly at the hands of the Turks; some scholars suggest that those reversals were key triggers for the establishment of the Templars by 1120.

TONY S.

7/4/2017 03:53:42 pm

Americanegro,

That's basically it.

Sissy ordered ham? She seemed more like the tofu type.

David Bradbury

7/5/2017 08:47:23 am

PS: Checking all the above against William of Tyre's summary of the origins of the Templars, it becomes apparent that he was a victim of his own chronological calculations. He specifically states that the Council of Troyes, where the Latin Rule was approved, was "post eorum institutionem ... anno nono" (the 9th year after their founding- as specified in the text of the Rule itself), but also that Hugues de Payens and his companions pledged themselves to the Patriarch of Jerusalem in the same year Warmund entered that office. The latter would be 1118, but the former was not when he thought it was.
The church in the East, including the Holy Land, used January 1 as the date of New Year, but some eccentrics in the far west of Europe, including France, used Lady Day (March 25). In the Latin Rule, dated 14 January 1128, the Patriarch of Jerusalem named is not Warmund, but Stephen, who took over after Warmund's death in July 1128- in other words the document, compiled in France, is using March 25 as a New Year date, putting 14 January 1128 AFTER July 1128, in what we would think of as January 1129.
Counting back the nine years from then, we arrive at an earliest-possible founding date of January 1120, which, probably not accidentally, is the date of the Council of Nablus where the laws for the Crusader kingdoms were established. Obviously, discussions with the Patriarch and the King would have begun before the Council, probably in late 1119, but basically William's calculated foundation date is 12 months too early.
PPS: William does specify that, at their foundation, the Templars followed "more Canonicorum regularium"- the custom of the Regular Canons (aka Augustinian Canons, but not to be confused with Augustinian Monks).

David Bradbury

7/5/2017 08:49:26 am

PPPS: William of Tyre does not say there were nine volunteers at the start, only that there were nine by the time of the Council of Troyes and their numbers grew rapidly thereafter.

Titus pullo

7/3/2017 08:03:12 pm

Unfortunately pedaophilia wasnt just occuring aming the lower classes but an accepted practice among the elites as an organized practice. Great examples are the upper class british public sector elites who often took trips to italy to procure young boys. Thesr perversions were common among such political elites as john maynard keynes. These stories based on factual evidence is often used by crazies like alex jones followers. Yes that guy has left his senses but history is filled with well connected politcal elites who have abused children. Giving rise to all sorts of wacky theories. Abuse of children by priests or political elites or an uncle or family friend cannot be covered up no matter how powerful the abuser is.

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Americanegro

7/4/2017 01:39:03 am

Hmm. Tony S. is a fan of Alexander the Great, who travelled with a thirteen year old catamite.

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TONY S.

7/4/2017 02:10:38 pm

Hey, even Alexander wasn't perfect. ;)

Kal

7/4/2017 11:58:05 am

All of this Templar stuff would matter if it weren't a legend post mortum of their cause, after the King of France had the leaders all killed, and the followers scattered. It is no more real after that than King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Fun to speculate, but hardly something to go to commenting war over.

Happy July 4!

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Americanegro

7/4/2017 07:13:28 pm

Hmm, Johnny Can't Cope checking in. "It is no more real after that than King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table." Yeah, remember all those contemporaneous records of King Arthur? JUST LIKE THAT.

Jadies and Lentilmen, we are in the presence of a HISTORIAN!

p.s. Dude, it's not "post mortum" if you're talking about what they did before they died.

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V

7/5/2017 01:02:43 am

1. There ARE no "contemporaneous records of King Arthur," for the simple fact that historians can't even pin down precisely WHEN he was supposed to have lived, and even if there were records of a king named Arthur, the Arthur of Camelot is as fictional as Hollywood's Robin Hood.

2. "legend post mortum"--a legend about what they SUPPOSEDLY did while alive, created AFTER they died. Much like how your obituary will be complete fiction if it says anything but "he was a small-minded Internet troll."

Americanegro

7/5/2017 01:49:56 am

Being a retard is no way to go through life, son, but the world needs ditch-diggers too.

"V
7/5/2017 01:02:43 am
1. There ARE no "contemporaneous records of King Arthur," for the simple fact that historians can't even pin down precisely WHEN he was supposed to have lived, and even if there were records of a king named Arthur, the Arthur of Camelot is as fictional as Hollywood's Robin Hood."

Good, we've established that you don't have a grasp of what "contemporaneous" means.

"even if there were records of a king named Arthur"

Do you understand how retarded it is to say that? Obviously there are, otherwise you wouldn't be talking about "a king named Arthur".

2. "legend post mortum"--a legend about what they SUPPOSEDLY did while alive, created AFTER they died. Much like how your obituary will be complete fiction if it says anything but "he was a small-minded Internet troll.""

When you're done sucking my dick you might want to acquaint yourself with the correct spelling of "post mortum". That was the point, ASS.

Jane Smith

7/5/2017 12:25:32 pm

David, to make things more complicated, they would have been using the Julian calendar. You are correct that the regular canons were not, strictly speaking, monks, as they weren't cloistered. The definition of canons is broad and the line between them and monks is slim. In general, Augustinian canons regular were considered clerics, living in a monastery according to the Rule of St. Augustine; i.e. they chanted the Divine Office, etc. Erasmus considered them somewhere between monks and clergy. It's easy to see how they were thought of as monks, as they lived the life of vowed religious. (1913 Catholic Encyclopedia)

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David Bradbury

7/5/2017 12:47:24 pm

I'd argue that in the 12th century, using the Julian calendar made things _less_ complicated, because its astronomical inaccuracy had not built up so much that anybody felt the need to correct it !

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Jane Smith

7/5/2017 12:59:38 pm

I meant complicated for us, trying to figure out exact dates.

David Bradbury

7/5/2017 02:09:12 pm

Depends on how they chose to express the precise date, I guess. If they used kalends and suchlike, it's a straightforward table lookup, but what sometimes gets me is when they give a date as the feast-day of a particular saint, and it turns out there are multiple saints with the same name so you have to figure out which one the writer was most likely to be thinking of.

Kal

7/5/2017 02:33:06 pm

King Arthur is a legend, loosely based on long dead kings, so are Templars, but Templars were based on a real group that also died.

Certain immature child like posters who make rude sexual comments only prove their complete lack of social and proper behavior. Tell me, do you blog to your Mother that tone? I bet she would be so proud. It is ergo though an insult to proper children, who would not post such awful comments.

Kal is not even a Dave or a Johnny. You are confused for someone else. You will also not trick me into revealing my true nature or gender. I could be a bot. I could be a person.

I just come here to comment on posts related to the topic, and do not be expected to avoid sexual harassment typing. If you have to resort to such filthy comments, you have lost any validity in your argument, and could be banned.

Some of you seem to think I am two of the other commenters. This is impossible. However, I know which commenters are doubled. I can also tell from your posts many things about you.

Maybe all of us are trolls of a sort.

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Americanegro

7/5/2017 11:09:22 pm

Asspie says what?

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Americanegro

7/6/2017 07:14:35 pm

You are aware that you're posting as both V and Kal, right? And that you're mentally ill, right?

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Kal

7/6/2017 01:54:10 am

King Arthur is a legend, loosely based on long dead kings, so are Templars, but Templars were based on a real group that also died.

Certain immature child like posters who make rude sexual comments only prove their complete lack of social and proper behavior. Tell me, do you blog to your Mother that tone? I bet she would be so proud. It is ergo though an insult to proper children, who would not post such awful comments.

Kal is not even a Dave or a Johnny. You are confused for someone else. You will also not trick me into revealing my true nature or gender. I could be a bot. I could be a person.

I just come here to comment on posts related to the topic, and do not be expected to avoid sexual harassment typing. If you have to resort to such filthy comments, you have lost any validity in your argument, and could be banned.

Some of you seem to think I am two of the other commenters. This is impossible. However, I know which commenters are doubled. I can also tell from your posts many things about you.

Maybe all of us are trolls of a sort.

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James Covalito

7/14/2017 02:15:48 pm

Watch out, Trump may crawl out from under your bed and get you when you're not expecting it!

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